I was thinking about this issue today because I have been thinking a lot about my mother.  I was born in 1967, meaning that abortion was illegal and her choice regarding my birth, her fifth pregnancy, was a non-option.  Going somewhere safe and having it was not affordable, going somewhere safe and having the baby and giving it away was not practical, and my mother was too smart and loved life too much to go the butcher's route.

So here I am, 42 years later and hearing that the president was forced to say that no abortion would be state funded in order to pass a law that would require personal responsibility regarding the cost of health care.  People who insist they will be able to pay and do not need insurance because they are healthy are irresponsible because you cannot predict the future and everyone eventually gets sick.  All the while, pills to correct ED and the medical visits to treat the ailment have been covered for a decade already.  So we are ready and eager to pay to make erections and unwilling to pay for the inevitable consequence of their action.  Isn't that special?

So this is what I had to say in a conversation with a friend about the very good post made here on OS by Cathy Wilson. 

Anyone who thinks that it is a light choice has never had life growing inside them. It is never a light choice, but sometimes it is the only choice for too many reasons to adequately legislate the decision. You just have to trust women. And that is the real heart of the abortion debate. Do you trust women to make rational and good decisions? Period. Until it is your body, it is not your decision to make." 

So, do you trust women?

The alternative is to retain a paternalistic hold on our health care funding regarding a woman's choice to rid herself of something growing inside her.  It seems clear to me that something growing inside you is first a medical condition, not a moral one.  And ironically, that fact is what makes it a matter of state rather than a personal decision based on morality.  Abortion is a medical problem first and a moral problem second.  This priority is why the law is on the books and why it is limited in the way it is already.  

We can't legislate morality for many reasons, the primary one being that we cannot agree to a standard across the entire group of the governed. The majority could pick the morality we all must live under, but I think we are all in agreement that the possibility of a fairly elected moral platform that I do not adhere to leaves me happy with the rational separation of church and state.  I am certain that my moral reality would not get the votes needed to win that race, and I am not even particularly special in my beliefs.  The US common body, as late as 50 years ago shuddered at the idea of a Catholic in office, much less a non-christian denomination.  We are simply too diverse a nation to legislate a state religion.  That horse is out of the barn and it is too late to homogenize us enough to make it work.

Men have the unique ability to argue about this without ever having the consequence of the argument affect them directly inside their own skin.  It is kind of like arguing about the draft when you are over 50, your children may be affected by your decisions, but you will not be directly forced to follow through with your life on the front line.  Men certainly have a stake in specific abortions of their sperm, but the hard reality is that women bear the burden of physical sacrifice.  If men had to live with the consequences of this type of legislation, I am sure the argument would look and go a lot differently.  Men historically love their freedom more than anything else.  

A man's attachment to the fetus is indirect.  I do not diminish their love for their children by offering a couple of observations.  They love their children, but their love is disjointed until the child is born.  The woman is never without the child once she knows it is there.  For nine months, the child is a constant, as constant as the sensation of air going into your nose.  Each moment of your life, while gestating, is mitigated by the child's presence and its hormones.  You are bonded by your blood, not bloodlines  that we can now verify (consider how much more removed men were from the unborn when the paternity was in question for the life of the pregnancy and often long after).  This does not mean that the man loves his offspring less, but it does mean that his bond with the child must begin after the birth or from an indirect distance during the pregnancy.  Thusly, men's decisions about pregnancy and the choice to carry or not should have less weight.

But our current political reality is that men have MORE influence on these matters due to their over representation in government and political debate.   This is unfortunate and largely the result of society's historical distrust and marginalization of women.  So people suffering no direct consequence of the laws and who have financial, personal, and political motivation to conserve the imbalance of power created in women being vulnerable to incapacitation by forced rape for one to eighteen years per pregnancy are making decisions about the legality of women being able to safely choose freedom from these odds.  

Anyway, I was just thinking about all this.  What do you think?  Do you trust women?

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